Forgive Them, For They Know not What They Do.

As a student of the American Revolution, I must always remind myself that, during the Stamp Act riots of 1765, the Tea Party of 1773, and even on the eve of Lexington and Concord in 1775, the Revolution itself was not a foregone conclusion. No one knew how the British would react to further attempts at rebellion. No one knew if New Yorkers and Virginians could unite behind the common cause of freedom from Parliament. These patriots were lawbreakers and their riotous actions led them onto uncertain legal and ethical grounds. If they failed, they most certainly would have been hanged for treason.

Looking back today, it is almost impossible to remove that foregone conclusion -- that the United States of America came into existence in 1776 -- from our analysis of the events that preceded it. Infinite economic, political, and ideological factors moved in wheels entangling and interlocking, causing many fractured and regional movements to ultimately coalesce into a Continental Army and Congress and, in 1789, a constitution that set forth for posterity a system of government conceived in liberty and equality, but ultimately unfinished. While the Revolution brought together unlikely coalitions -- laborers and merchants, Virginian planters and Bostonian distellers -- that agreed on the concept of home rule, many of the Revolutionaries disagreed on the idea of exactly who would rule at home if they succeeded.

We tend to ignore all the idiosyncrasies and hypocrisies of the Revolution in favor of a glowing portrait of our Founding Fathers and a distorted image of their rebellious antecedents. Few remember the Loyal Nine of Boston, the precursors to the Sons of Liberty, leading the poorest segments of the population on riotous marches against Boston's wealthiest Tories and government officials, burning and sacking and drinking from the South End to the North. These riots were not always coordinated efforts to bring the crown to heel, but uncontrolled crowd action that would not ever be tolerated in the United States today. We would call in the National Guard in a heartbeat if we saw today in Boston what happened in Boston in 1765.

And all of this makes me wonder how any can invoke the Tea Party or the American Revolution today in service of a political ideology. We are a nation so removed from the context of the 18th century with established principles of self-government and responsive political institutions that would make many patriots blush. We have expanded the rights guaranteed under the Constitution of 1789 to all Americans, black or white, male or female, and we continue to strive toward furthering equality under the law in this country as we tackle the troubling issues of socio-economic inequality and unjust laws laws like Don't Ask, Don't Tell. We do not live an ocean away from our lawmakers nor do they ignore our pleas and petitions for redress.

Those who invoke the Tea Party and the Revolution today should be ashamed. Not because they are ignorant (I can accept that), but because they distort our perception of the creation of the United States. As Timothy Egan wrote in The New York Times today:

Where was the Tea Party movement when the tax burden was shifted from the high end to the middle? Where were the patriots when Wall Street, backed in Congress by Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, rewrote securities laws so that the wonder boys of Lehman and A.I.G. could reduce home mortgages to poker chips at a trillion-dollar table?

Where were the angry “stiffs” when the banking industry rolled the last Congress — majority Democrat, by the way — into rewriting bankruptcy law, making it easier to keep people in permanent credit card hock?

Where were they when President Bush started the bailouts, with $700 billion that had to be paid on a few days’ notice — with no debate — to save global capitalism.

If it is time for another Revolution, it is not that time now because we wish to give health care coverage to the 48 million Americans who do not have it. If it is time for another Revolution, it is not that time now because we wish to simplify the student loan process for students seeking higher education in this country. And if it is time for Revolution, it is not that time now because we sit, poised on what appears to be a defining period in American history, where we must decide how to respond to crises, national and global, that force us to adapt to uncertain contexts we do not yet fully comprehend. Global credit and finance whirl overhead like dark storm clouds as domestic inequalities and foreign wars fracture our existing coalitions and political frameworks.

Like the Old Revolutionaries, we cannot look into the future with absolute clarity. But if we choose to respond to these crises with fear and not courage, with acceptance of mediocrity over the challenge of reform, we might as well give up the experiment of democracy today for we are not worthy of its mantle.

Smoke and Mirrors

If you know me, I’ve probably recommended you watch Mad Men at some point over the last year. The first two seasons floored me. My mouth would hang open during new episodes. Did Betty Draper, negligee pattering in light wind, cigarette dangling from crimson lips actually just start shooting a pump action rifle at her neighbor’s pigeons? (Yes, she did.) If you talked to me back then, I would have claimed that Mad Men was the best show on TV (except for maybe The Wire). Then we’d sit down to watch, cocktails in hand, eyes stuck on the set.

That was until Season Three debuted at the end of August. With dustless Emmys from Season Two sitting in AMC’s offices, the stakes were much higher as a wider audience began to catch onto the premiere hype. I was moved by several scenes, particularly Peggy Olsen singing ‘Bye, Bye Birdie’ to her mirror and Don Draper stroking the heavy, Spring-straight grass as his children paraded around a May Pole, but, by and large, the show felt sterile and slow.

While the first two seasons eschewed campy episode arcs, they did have obvious pacing and rhythm, melding Draper’s public and private lives until they blurred beyond recognition (to both the viewer and Draper himself). But now the scenes refuse to linger, cutting in and out of various plots fracturing continuity. I love all the conflicts as they pit characters of the post war elite against the rising counterculture, social issues boiling over the glassy sheen of posed perfection into the lives of the headstrong men of Sterling Cooper, but now it is just a muddled mess. The writers are avoiding sentimentality and the repetition – the usual killers of once good TV – but that doesn’t mean the show needs to excise all sentiment. Remember Don Draper’s heart wrenching pitch to Kodak in Season Two as his marriage collapsed into memory like the yellowing slide’s flashing across the screen. Elegiac, tragic, beautiful.

I used to sit soundless in front of the TV, but, now, I find the show boring; the characters manufactured and posed. In the show’s defense, it continues to nail the aesthetic of the United States of the 1960s. Matthew Weiner, the show’s creator, meticulously brought back to life an America of our not-so-distant past: the clothes, the drinking, and the cigarettes all hand-in-hand with status quo misogyny, homophobia, and chummy Old Boy politics as the ad men slurred through work days and gin-stained nights with wretched ease; wives betrayed and ads bought and sold at dizzying pace. We yearned to uncover the skeletons that piled to the top of Don Draper’s closet and wanted to see the real face of his wife, Betty, behind her Stepford smile.

But now it all feels forced, contrived. Some friends say I am passing judgment on the third season too soon. They tell me to give it time and let the plot lines unfurl and tangle together in typical Mad Men fashion. But now I wonder if we let the aesthetic of the show distort our senses. The short, painful scenes of the third season are so un-Mad Men. Gone are the long conversations and soliloquies that hovered alongside life’s worst moments, awkward and painful, but ultimately vivid and rewarding.

I still watch Mad Men, but it feels like a hollow suit, the kind so often attributed to those in gray flannel. Maybe it all was just smoke and mirrors after all.

Long Time No See

It has been quite awhile since I last posted and, as my senior year at Tufts looms large, I feel the need to get writing again. Where else can I rant about the decline of Mad Men and the pomo image crisis in Twilight?

But to get started I am going to forget about all that and write about soccer. I'm headed back to school this weekend and will miss DC United go for its 13th major title on September 2nd at RFK when they take on Seattle Sounders FC for the US Open Cup Title. The US Open Cup is the oldest major sports tournament in the United States (older than the World Series, the Super Bowl, etc.) Any team can enter from amateur clubs to professional clubs, providing lots of drama. Several amateur clubs knocked off MLS teams (fielding reserve squads) in the earlier stages of the tournament. For fans of English footy, it is the US equivalent to the FA Cup and, for soccer fans, it is a big deal.

If you are in town, go to the game! Tickets are cheap and beers are going for $2. Tailgate with the Barra and jump up and down ans sing until the stands shake and you sound like a hyena.

But, don't listen to me. Take it from Ryan Zimmerman.

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday

The United States of America versus Brazil
Final of the 2009 FIFA Confederations Cup
Johannesburg, South Africa
Sunday, June 28
2:30 PM EST

Benedict Arnold. Meet Giuseppe Rossi.

This picture (via The Offside Rules) provides a pretty decent summary of my reaction to the U.S. national team's 3-1 loss to Italy today. The vicious traitor pictured above, the New Jersey born and raised striker Giuseppe Rossi, dropped two goals in the second half of the U.S-Italy match to bury his country of birth (Rossi spurned the U.S. team to play for Italy, his father's native country).

A bogus red card to Rico Clark in 1st half left the US with little chance of winning and despite scoring first thanks to a great effort by Jozy Altidore to draw a PK, Rossi managed one incredible shot, Daniele De Rossi (the same man who elbowed Brian McBride in the face in 2006) beat Tim Howard later in the half, and the villain of the night Rossi hit the jugular in stoppage time to send the azzurri to victory (and reignite my hatred of the Italian national team).

Before the match, I thought if Rossi scored against the U.S. he might not celebrate. Maybe a solitary fist pump, but out of deference for the country that raised him he'd jog back to the half way line and keep playing. This is not what happened. With arms raised Rossi slapped his country of birth across the face with an overzealous celebration and stomped on all the Americans who had defended him and pulled for him throughout his career. Sure anyone would be thrilled to score a goal in a major soccer tournament, but to draw blood and then twist the knife in the sides of U.S. soccer fans was cruel and I thought Rossi should have shown more respect to the country that accepted him and his family.

The match was a part of the Confederation's Cup being contested now in South Africa. A perfect tune-up to the 2010 World Cup, check out the US take on Kaka and Brazil on Thursday.

The Real World

After 12 hours of flying, connections, and a very, very cold Serbian woman (long story that involved multiple sweaters, a neck pillow, and a mummified, blanketed sleeping position), I'm home.

Had Mexican food last night and went to bed at 9 pm. No grand cultural observations from this writer just yet. Trying not to extrapolate scenes from the Mexican restaurant and the airport into general platitudes about Americans being louder, fatter, and more obnoxious than I remembered. Trying not to do this is difficult.

In all honesty, it does feel odd to be home and I'm not quite sure how I feel about it yet. If only their was some form of cultural half-way house over the Atlantic where I could acclimate into an American again.

A Moveable Feast, Part II

It only seems fitting that an updated version of A Moveable Feast has been published this Spring. The book that for so long colored and filled my perceptions of Paris with sepia toned photographs of 1920s nostalgia has been given a face lift: new stories and vignettes added to complete and to illuminate the often biased picture the original book gives of Paris, its literary community, and Hem's family themselves.

And why this all seems fitting -- as you know by now -- is that I have just completed my first stint in the same city that became Hemingway's adopted home and I have taken away my own stories and perceptions of a place so far gone from that literary ideal and still so alive in hundreds of other ways that I'd never seen or expected before as if some hazy introduction has been stitched together from nights and mornings and cafés and classrooms.

So at this time, I'd like to thank everyone who has read the blog and stayed in touch with me since January. As much as I've learned about Paris and its and corners and dives, I've learned about myself and what I want to do with the rest of my life and this blog and writing to all of you back home or wherever you may be has played a major role (if not the most important role) in this awareness. You are as much a part of this blog as I am and Paris as much a part of you as it is of me.

I'm sad to be leaving and it's a shame that now, when for the first time in several months I feel at ease here, my time is up. But as Hemingway said better than I ever will:

There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other. We always returned to it no matter who we were or how it was changed or with what difficulties, or ease, it could be reached. Paris was always worth it and your received return for whatever your brought to it. But this is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy.

So once again. Thank You.